Look Ma, I Made It Myself! 10 Amazing Things 3-D Printers Can Do Now

The breathless predictions about 3-D printers — they'll revolutionize X, Y, and Z industries, they'll even mop your floors! — can steal the spotlight from the everyday applications already in use. Analysts predict 3-D printing will become a $3.1 billion industry by 2016, driven by manufacturers of everything from shoes to sedans. Here are 10 ways 3-D printing is reshaping industrial design now.

While MakerBot grabs headlines, Israel-based Objet is pushing the limit of what is possible in mechanical prototyping. Their 3D-printing tech is high resolution and can handle multiple materials. Photo: Objet

Fix a Snaggle Tooth

Drilling, yanking, affixing wires that you have to wear for years: A trip to the dentist or orthodontist is the closest most people will get to torture. Thankfully, some forward-thinking companies are inventing ways to bring dentistry out of the stone age.

Align Technology (ALGN) makers of Invisalign braces has built a nearly half-billion-dollar business by 3-D printing orthodontic aids based on scanned data of teeth. Instead of wearing the traditional metal braces, a series of slightly different clear braces are printed out — fixing a problem smile without the metal-mouth look.

Photo: Align Technology

Build your Dream House

Future generations will laugh that people once visualized new construction projects using blueprints. A prospective homeowner can now opt for a 3D-printed, full-color, dollhouse-sized version of their new abode before they cut their first check.

Companies like iMaterialise will print a small version of your new home for $400 to $700, depending on size.

Photo: ZCorp

Pop the Question

Jewelers typically prototype new pieces by hand-carving models out of wax that are then cast in precious metal — a labor-intensive process that is prone to small accidents. Today, the maker can design a model in a CAD/CAM program like JewelStudio and create the form with a 3-D printer or CNC mill.

Want to learn more? The MJSA, an association for jewelry makers, designers, and suppliers that focuses on design/manufacturing challenges, publishes a variety of journals to help artisans better understand custom manufacturing technologies.

Photo: SolidScape

Dress Like a Rockstar

The fashion world was an early adopter of 3-D printing. Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen uses 3-D printers to create designer fashion for Björk and Lady Gaga. Freedom of Creation and Naim Josefi are using 3-D printers to make flashy heels that would make Carrie Bradshaw gasp. Continuum Fashion created the first 3-D printed bikini and glasses made on the MakerBot Replicator were the toast of the 2012 Fashion Week.

Photo: Iris Van Herpen

Award Yourself a Videogame Trophy

Back when you ruled the day on Space Invaders, a high score meant inscribing your initials on a leaderboard. Today, your videogame exploits can be memorialized in three dimensions.

Figure Prints creates trophies from World of Warcraft and Minecraft using ZCorp technology, the only 3D-printing method capable of printing full-color parts.

Photo: ZCorp

Print Your Prescription

3D-printed joints or bones are now helping 30,000 patients remain mobile, 10 million are using custom-fit hearing aids, and in the near future, the machines will be used to print pharmaceutical drugs.

When conjoined twins needed to be separated in a complex surgery, physicians from the Mayo Clinic commissioned 3-D prints of the internal organs based on MRIs. This allowed the team of 18 health care professionals to familiarize themselves with the complexity of the surgery before making the first incision in a time-sensitive procedure. No, it's not as dramatic as printing living tissue, but the example illustrates the many ways in which 3-D tech is influencing medical care.

Customized jaw implant produced on a 3-D printer using CAD data obtained from an MRI. Photo: Xilloc

Boost Your Kickstarter Project

Most 3-D printers are used at the engineering stage of a project, but they can create finished goods, too, especially when the creator only plans to do a limited production run. The "Crania Anatomica Filigre" is the third most funded art project in Kickstarter history and required artist Joshua Harker to produce 894 plastic skulls using a 3-D printer.

RedEye, a division of 3-D printer manufacturer Stratasys, hosts a library of white papers and webinars detailing the potential applications and advantages of additive fabrication in a production environment.

This skull sculpture is the highest-grossing 3D-printer-based project in Kickstarter history. Photo: Joshua Harker

Teach the Next Generation of Designers

A well-run bake sale can generate enough funds for a school to buy a 3-D printer and 123D is a free beginner's CAD program. It just takes one plucky parent to get kids learning the basics of mechanical engineering by the time they can ride a bike.

O'Reilly Media recently won a grant from Darpa to build 1,000 hacker spaces in schools across America. The program is still taking shape, but their MakerSpaces are a first step in bringing this new tool to the K-12 set.

Photo: MakerBot

Reshape Scientific Models

Watson and Crick are famous for discovering the molecular structure of DNA. What is less well known is that while their colleagues were running experiments, they spent most of their time building models with physical sticks and balls.

Today, budding Nobel Laureates have far more powerful tools at their disposal. Scientists, like those at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, use 3-D printers to better understand biological structures that are difficult to conceptualize, helping to educate peers and grant-givers along the way.

As scientists adopt this new way to model complex structures, the most important byproduct of 3-D printing may not be a plastic widget or a replacement bone, but a radical rethinking of a core scientific belief.